Tyrus (2015)
Unless you are a dedicated Disney fan, you might not know of the name Tyrus Wong. Wong, who passed away on December 30, 2016 at the age of 106, was a Chinese-American artist who also worked as a production illustrator in Hollywood – he is most famous for his concept paintings, which allowed him to become the principal creative force behind the artistic style seen in Bambi (1942). He – excuse me if I alternate between referring to him as both his first name and surname later in this piece – had not been recognized for his artistry and ingenuity until long after he had left motion pictures. The tardiness of the attention that would come his way was due to various reasons, including the fact that Asian-American accomplishments have long been marginalized in the writing of American cinematic history. But listening to him in Tyrus – directed by Pamela Tom after a successful Kickstarter campaign – there seems to be no bitterness or anger. Even after becoming a centenarian, if that bitterness or anger did exist, it seems to have been overtaken by Wong’s joy in being surrounded by family and in his artistry.
Tyrus first appeared on the American film festival circuit in 2015 and aired as an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) American Masters series – which highlights writers, musicians, filmmakers, and visual and performing artists who have impacted American popular culture – on September 8, 2017, with an additional postscript recognizing Wong’s death on the PBS premiere.
Born on October 25, 1910 as Wong Gen Yeo in Taishan on the southeast coast of China, Wong does not spend much time speaking about his early childhood across the Pacific. As beautifully-presented as his immigration story is, the departure from China feels rushed. 1910s China is described as undergoing “tremendous turmoil... and great poverty”, but the documentary never describes how and why Tyrus’ father made the decision, in 1920, to take his son to the United States while leaving his wife and daughter behind (some speculation: the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1912, prompting a series of violent warlord wars). Tyrus never saw or heard from his mother or sister again. This family background, before Wong’s arrival in America, probably is the most underdeveloped part in the entire documentary – although it could be true that, after more than ninety years removed from his departure from China, the memories of those early days had long faded by the time this documentary was made. Accounts of what Tyrus’ father was doing after settling in the United States other than disciplining and supporting his son’s interests also could have helped.
After a hilarious recounting of the first time he had seen and used a toilet – this on the ship that ferried Wong and his father to the United States – this documentary then frames his story as one of the thousands of immigrants held on Angel Island. Angel Island is referred to as the “Ellis Island of the West”, located in the San Francisco Bay, with the city of San Francisco and Alcatraz Island – still a military prison by the time Wong and his father arrived in America – in sight. Where Ellis Island in American popular culture has become a cherished place lauded as the gateway of European immigrants’ Americanization – ignoring its plentiful history of deportations and targeting of "unintelligent” and undesirable persons – Angel Island’s Immigration Station is best remembered for being the face of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Because Tyrus’ father had spent time in the United States before, he was allowed into the country without much trouble. But because Tyrus had never set foot abroad, he would be separated from his father and was forced to undergo a series of highly detailed, arduous interrogations in which any deviations from his answers might result in a prolonged stay or deportation. Some stayed at Angel Island for years; Tyrus reunited with his father after one month.
Years pass and Tyrus becomes a sort of street urchin in Sacramento and later in Los Angeles, while his teachers and his father recognized his artistic talent. The documentary provides us a glimpse of several deft doodles, as well as a picture of a miniature symphony orchestra made entirely of matchsticks. He attained a scholarship after middle school to attend the Otis College of Art and Design in LA, where his portraits and sketches became influenced by Chinese paintings from the Song dynasty (960-1279). You can see the brushstrokes – like a Chinese calligrapher’s – first pressed onto and then off the surface. This sort of abstraction suggests movement. Landscape paintings emphasize scope, with the framing of the portrait far away from the mountains, buildings, and foliage that might be featured. When describing the formation of Wong’s artistic style, animation historian and animator John Canemaker comes in and notes that Chinese artists do not emphasize detail because it is seen as, “childish”, and that through the abstraction a Chinese artist is expressing the joy of their creations (see: Wong’s “Self-Portrait” from his Otis days).
It is that joy that brought Wong to Walt Disney Animation Studios, as well as the struggle for legal tender. Beginning as an inbetweener – inbetweening/tweening refers to the process of supplying successive frames of animation in between two images so that those two images appear as smoothly as possible in the final cut – for Mickey Mouse short films, Wong came to despise being tasked with tedious clean-up animation. Hearing that Bambi was in production, Wong spent his weekends creating conceptual sketches of backgrounds. His sketches and portraits – rooted in his specialty as a background artist – would be presented to Walt Disney, who marveled at the work, and instructed that the backgrounds in Bambi be similar to Wong’s artistry. Wong never met Disney, and despite being so critical to Bambi’s aesthetic, he would be released by the studio after his role on the film had been completed.
Following his dismissal, Wong worked part-time as a designer of Hallmark Christmas cards (see: this and this) and with Warner Bros. Studios as a production illustrator for their live-action films. He retired in 1968, with some of his Warner Bros. credits including Key Largo (1948), Calamity Jane (1953), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Auntie Mame (1958), Rio Bravo (1959), The Music Man (1962), and The Wild Bunch (1969; his final film).
For a person of Asian descent to make a living in the older Hollywood Studio System, barriers to their success appeared in the form of executive politics, the common image of them working in studios as janitors or handypersons, and the prejudiced behavior and words of their co-workers. Tyrus Wong withstood such treatment throughout his career, never showing any desires to retaliate or to just accept the racially resentful misbehavior of others. Liberation and personal freedom came from his work and time spent with family, not in showing others up. Wong’s story has been an inspiration for Asian-American animators, and it could have been interesting to incorporate some of their stories and why they admire Wong so much to show how he is still exerting influence, long after Bambi. This segment with Robert Kondo and Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi – directors of the Academy Award-nominated short film The Dam Keeper (2014) – recorded for American Masters is only one example of how Wong’s legacy continues. All this despite his role in Bambi being downplayed in the opening credits and the Walt Disney Studios upon initial release, it is the story of how one person, forging their own difficult path with bravery and good humor, can change the direction of an art form.
The films suffers a little bit for its dependence on talking heads from limited perspectives – again, the lack of Asian-American animators and other animators of different races of ethnicities is a problem – rather than just keeping it to Tyrus, his family (I wanted to know more about the relationship between Tyrus and his wife of fifty-eight years, Ruth Ng Kim, who passed away after a long spell of dementia in 1995), or his friends when most appropriate. They are the individuals that know him best, and the family and Tyrus’ surviving working friends (archival footage would have been fine, too) especially should have more screentime.
Walt Disney Animation Studios came calling one last time in the mid-1990s, years after Wong departed Warner Bros., asking him to serve as animation director on Mulan (1998). Wong declined, saying that he had long retired from animated film and that he was perfectly content in producing his own artworks and designing and flying ornate, traditional Chinese kites on the beaches of Santa Monica.
Late in the documentary, Wong professes that he attributes his success to these strengths: “Luck and hard work. I wouldn’t say talented; I’m not that talented.” With all due respect to Tyrus Wong, it is all three of those. He had the great fortune of having a father and mentors that supported his work, as well as tireless animation experts who knew the extent of his cinematic contributions. Amid all the obstacles – social, racial, economic, personal – presented in his life, he has always persevered. His talent is unquestionable. As a master artist and wonderful father and friend, this is a story that took too long to be told. For those who love the movies or simply stories in which the human spirit prevails over successive hardships, we should only be so fortunate that Tyrus Wong’s story has, at last, been told.
My rating: 8.5/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
